Indonesian futures exchange plans blockchain for gold

Today the Jakarta Futures Exchange (JFX) announced that it is joining forces with Kinesis Money and Allocated Bullion Exchange to create a commercial blockchain venture.

JFX is the main Indonesian futures and derivatives exchange group which began trading in 2000.

Real assets

The latest collaboration aims to develop an Indonesian based and regulated blockchain exchange.

The new JFX system will be built upon an existing system that Kinesis developed with ABX which uses gold and silver as the basis for digital currencies. In other words, the platform is for tokenized gold and silver. These are then transacted on the Kinesis Blockchain Exchange.

“The bespoke blockchain network that we developed creates a complete monetary system which enables real, physical assets to be transacted and exchanged digitally, at speed and at low cost,” explained CEO of Kinesis and ABX, Thomas Coughlin. “We believe that the integration of physical precious metals and distributed ledger technology offers tremendous value to the Indonesian market, with its dual interest in gold and in blockchain.” It is this system that will be built upon by JFX.

ABX, the electronic institutional exchange for physical precious metals is currently working with JFX to expand gold investment opportunities in Indonesia. This includes the announced launch of the Sharia Gold Contract, which has been granted approval by Indonesian regulators and the Indonesian National Shariah Board.

The Kinesis platform is a fork of Stellar’s technology and hence has a relatively high transaction rate. It claims as much as 3,000 transactions per second.

Other gold initiatives

Tradewind, the startup backed by Bain Capital launched a blockchain gold platform in March where the Canadian Royal Mint acts as custodian of the physical gold.

In January Australian InfiniGold launched digital gold certificates backed by physical gold held at the Perth Mint. However, it doesn’t appear to be blockchain-based as it uses proprietary technology.